School Library Journal
Gr 6 Up A collection of 11 disturbing, depressing, and occasionally disappointing stories. Not at all the ``wonderfully spooky'' collection promised, these are, instead, stories of dark domesticity, of fear, and of melancholy. In fact, when one of the characters says (in ``The Yellow Ball''), ``You make everything sound so sad and wrong,'' he might be speaking of Pearce herself. This observation is not offered as criticism but, rather, to invoke the mood of the book which is vaguely reminiscent of Jan Mark's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (Harper, 1982), but without the spirit and wit of the latter. Like the Mark book, too, Pearce's latest is one of those titles that may or may not be a children's book at all. Certainly the best of the stories here may demand an adult sensibility to fully appreciate them, while the less successful may be heavy handed and too obvious, demanding too little instead of too much of their readers. All in all the best of the collection (``Black Eyes,'' ``The Road It Went By,'' ``Who's Afraid,'' ``Mr. Hurrel's Tallboy,'' and ``The Yellow Ball'') confirm Pearce's stature as a modern master, while the rest regrettably find her a bit below the top of her form. Michael Cart, Beverly Hills Public Library